


The Ebb and the Tide of Magic

by Sarablade



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Awkward Romance, BAMF Hermione Granger, Canon-Typical Violence, Dominance, Don Juan Snape, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Severus Snape, Kidnapping, Poor Life Choices, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redeeming, Rekindled love, Terrorism, dubcon, loss of power, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:18:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarablade/pseuds/Sarablade
Summary: Summary: The war is but a memory. Draco successfully organizes conferences the world over, and unsuccessfully tries to hold together his father's mental health and his godfather's desultory moods. Snape is worn by too much female attention, not enough intellectual challenges, and not knowing why his former Apprentice all but disappeared from the Wizarding World... Draco thought he'd have to challenge Snape's interest in the scientific conference by having him room next to a stunning Spanish redhead researcher, but even exclusive conferences by the Black Sea are not immune from modern age terrorism and Nazi bunkers, and that's interest enough. And into their posh hotel by the blue waters walks Granger, complete with Harvard doctorate and Tibetan monk fighting skills, but incomplete in terrifying other ways.





	1. Of all the pubs in the world...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Betz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Betz/gifts).



> This was written on a prompt from Bonsaibetz: Severus, the war hero, has a built up a reputation for bedding many witches and brags about his seduction skills to Draco. Draco bets Severus he can't bed the next witch who walks through the door at (your choice of location), and they agree to the bet. Coincidentally, Hermione Granger walks in.
> 
> Complete in five chapters. Will try to update weekly.
> 
> Please review?

The dark-haired man watched the blond get to the table where he was nursing his sourness. "Are you in jest?" he spat. "Now we won't be able to beat them off with a stick! We look like a bloody comedy number!"

The blond hunk raised a sculpted eyebrow. "Indeed, Severus? Stage dress? You're wearing your birthday present from Mother. Pure Shetlands cashmere. "

The sweater was a very dark shade of hunter green, and Severus had paired it—rather, Draco had paired it and Severus, grumbling, put the outfit on—with dark anthracite trousers and a grey silk neck scarf under a black silk shirt. Severus had declined everything but his dragon-hide boots, so Draco was wearing some, too. Under an anthracite sweater— Shetlands cashmere, of course - matched to pants in a very dark shade of hunter green and a silk neck scarf in jewel tones of green that cleverly enhanced the blond's Teutonic complexion. The contrast set off the difference between the two men, swarthy and brooding to haughty and pale. They meshed flawlessly in the posh, sophisticated public of the falsely rustic pub-cum-lodge lobby in the Carpathians, not too far—by specially arranged Floo—from the sea resort of Constanta where the 26th Annual Save the Black Sea! Conference for the protection of the environment was beginning the next morning.

Despite the fact that it was the lobby of a travelling lodge in the Middle of Nowhere Hills, the burnished woodwork and deep pile carpets of the Gurocdy Lodge, which had catered to the nineteenth-century aristocracy favoring the Gurocdy baths over Karlsbad's, and its exceptional liquor cellar, had earned it a Distinguished Wizard Traveler recommendation, almost the only establishment to earn one in the Carpathian mountains. 

Also, it was where Severus and his only apprentice ever had come in from the cold after a nightly plant harvesting in the neighboring hills during the 20th conference. Back then, Severus had seized the opportunity for a nightly hike in the beautiful mountains and a bout of onsite teaching about the rare magical species of the area. And to make himself some memories. After five nocturnal hours of harvesting in the freezing clean air, he and his apprentice had companionably shared mug after mug of hot spiced tea, their conversation bringing them smiling into a tired, beautiful dawn. They'd closed the night, without having even said a word about the comfortable bedrooms upstairs even though each of them had never stopped thinking about them, with a hearty breakfast and Invigorata Potion from the apprentice's bag before Apparating back to the Conference for the first session. She'd been soft and lively and inviting. Even as the men talked, Severus' heartbeat picked up and his stomach fell as he thought how that night could have ended. If he'd only been less of a coward, or of a gentleman.

But Draco didn't need to know that. 

The men's appearance wasn't lost on the feminine public of the hospitality area they were sitting in. Movement was caught in the corner of Snape's eye. He snorted. "As I told you, the sharks have smelled blood. You deal with it."

"It" was a striking bottle blonde in pretend mountaineer garb—leather high boots, tight ripped jeans, ripped silk bodice under an open flannel shirt. The dainty lingerie clearly visible under the artistic holes in the tee had clearly never seen any kind of sport, though. At least outside the bedroom.

"It" was sashaying towards them, smart eyes wide open but dropping every few seconds in mock bashfulness, hips swaying. She sat at the table near theirs and began reapplying her lipstick, or rather worshipping it with her mouth, her eyes meaningfully flickering at the men near her. She had a kind of clever sexiness about her, which put out all but the manliest men.

"If you feel charitable, tell her she shouldn't swallow so much of it," Severus hissed. "All those artificial colors will give her cancer."

"She's a witch, come in from Spain for the Conference. She won't get cancer, and she has a room on your floor at the hotel. A Ph.D. in Mineralogy, too. Come on, Sev. She's exactly what you need. Don't be shy. "

A snort. "Shy? Exhausted, rather. I wish, for once, a woman would let me be the man and pursue her for more than five minutes before she expects mock Death Eaters calisthenics in the bedroom. Not that any of them would be ready to take the real thing, either, and let me have some actual fun." He snorted.

"Now you're boasting."

"I wish. I'm not even talking about the Muggles." He ignored the blond's wrinkled nose. Pureblood prejudice was vanquished in his godson, but Draco would still remain celibate rather than engage a non-magical woman. Even for one night. Severus mused for a moment about the meanders of prejudice. Draco the Enlightened had Muggleborn friends and employees whom he held dear, but he wouldn't touch one with a stick except for a handshake or a friendly peck. His father couldn't be bothered to be civil to one, hardly saw them as human beings. In bed, though, or on the floor. everything went, with gusto.

"Come on, Sev. Even I don't get every witch I want, and I'm good-looking, rich, and divorced." Draco stared moodily into his fifth—make that seventh local rotgut glass. The locals did have their local plants science down pat. He could see even Severus was under the influence.

"Well, I do. Even those I don't really want." After twenty years of soul-wrecking tension and almost total abstinence, he usually realized the "not really" part only in the morning after, though. "It's no blessing. Anyone I look at in a mildly interested way. Maybe I should go back to sulking all the time."

"Oh, come on. You don't certainly get just anyone you fancy?"

"Anyone. Even those I don't fancy so much, I tell you." The gloominess in his voice stirred something in his godson.

"I bet you can't get the next one coming through the door."

"Who is it? Anyway, I can."

"I don't know who it'll be."

"You'd pair me with anybody? Maybe it's an old hag? Maybe a prostitute."

Draco smirked. They were in business. He really excelled at this Conference organization thing, but it was a boring business. How many flings discovered by an irate spouse back home, how many upset stomachs or wayward journalists, how many lost laptops, drunk lecturers and missed Portkeys could one manage before it became boring? He'd amped the game here, holding a Muggle and a Wizarding conference concurrently, with parts actually overlapping and carefully chosen Muggle researchers admitted to the Wizarding parts, but even that got old fast. And Severus needed something to stir him back to reality, too. The older man had been too ensconced in his work since this debacle almost six years ago...

His women never lasted more than a week, if that. A flash of mischievous brightness enlightened Draco's eyes for a lightbulb moment. After all, he loved both his father and his godfather. He could do a good turn to at least one of them, and be entertained, too.

He set to work. "Okay. I bet you can't bed the next woman who comes in and keep her enamored for at least two weeks. You have to," he added viciously, "keep her for one more week after you've told her you got her as a bet. And then leave her graciously. She has to be a witch. Muggles are too easy. No magical mindfuck. And you can't tell lies."

Some flickering light of interest severed Severus' gaze from his glass.

"Will I have to tell the truth?"

Draco's expression was priceless. "Do I look heartless to you? Of course I wouldn't ask such a preposterous thing!"

"What's in there for me if I win?"

"Not a lot, of course. You're so sure it'll be a walk in the park. What about." From long ago, all bets between Snape and the Malfoy men were under an Unbreakable umbrella. One had to be wary what one undertook, and they both were more than a little under their drinks. The blonde's forehead wrinkled in thought. "If you win, I'll get Bellatrix to stop pestering you at your home and at Malfoy functions. For the rest, I can't be responsible."

"An appreciable boon for a certainty, but I'm not spending a month with whomever. The timeline is my prerogative. Also, she has to be between twenty-five years younger, and five years older than me. I'm neither robbing cradles nor pushing wheelchairs."

Draco crinkled his eyes at him. "Minerva."

"Twenty-five years either way." 

Draco smirked. The crinkle of the wood in the chimney flared as a bigger log collapsed into ashes.

Severus shrugged, his narrowed eyes mutely conveying some things were too good for a pub conversation. He smiled thinly. "Not Minerva either. I heard she might pop in for the Sea Creatures Transfiguration workshop." As an afterthought, he added, "No virgins."

"How would we know? 

"I'll tell you."

"Severus, getting soft with age? Think of all the potions you'll be able to complete."

"No patience for the drama." The dark man's face stayed closed, his eyes betraying only interest for his drink. "In any case, she must be unattached. Not even engaged."

"Grown a conscience?"

"Fastidious. Otherwise," he susurrated, "I'd have gone after your mother."

Draco acknowledged the pique, and the—long bygone?—tension between the three most important adults of his childhood.

And so he went for the kill.

"If you lose. it's something to do with Father. Mother is also excluded, by the way. But virgins? We could finally have something interesting to do, this time. Virgins are definitely in. If you lose—"

Severus was back in his glass, uninterested. "Won't happen. I know what I'm talking about." In a rotgut-induced hardiness, he said, "You know what? Keep the virgins out, and I agree to anything if I lose. Provided I don't risk a limb on it. And no saddling me with your aunt." How difficult would it be to bed an unattached, age-appropriate witch? He did feel cocky. a little. And there was a lingering feeling of revenge on the "better" sex, blindly bedding whoever after the one he'd wooed discreetly in this very room had left him high and dry. Well, dry. He hadn't crawled of his Ogden's bottle for a week after the separation in the street. And it wasn't really she who'd done the leaving, either. Technically.

"Good. If you lose, you remand the ban on my father from going after Granger."

The temperature dropped around them. "No." It had been automatic, dry, lethal. The black eyes were focused on him now, feral and threatening. 

"You agreed."

"I got your father under an Unbreakable not to go after her. I'm not remanding it."

"You just you agreed to remand it. Father also gets bored, you know. He's so restless I'm afraid he's going to make something stupid. Granger is powerful enough to stand up to him. Maybe we'll finally find entertainment. Maybe they'll fall for each other, and you'll finally have a go at Mother. Who knows?" 

For the first time since the fall of the Dark Lord, he saw Snape's Adam's apple going up and down in distress. Second time, actually. The first one had been when, two weeks after the end of the apprenticeship, Snape had visited him and laid on the table the very nice diamond Draco had forced on him the afternoon before what had become known as the Debacle Dinner. 

"Propose, Severus. If she accepts, you'll formally buy the ring from me. I'll give you a fair price."

"It's a good-bye dinner, Draco. Not a date."

"You've been officiously dating for two years! Maybe five, depending how you look at it. It's your first outing after you're not under these ridiculous misplaced ethical scruples you nurtured about her being your apprentice, when the girl has been positively drooling over you since she was at school! Take pity on her. Do it tonight. At least declare a courtship. You're both so old-fashioned it could work." 

Back then also he'd painstakingly chosen clothes for his godfather. even underwear.

"Leave it, Draco. She's not interested."

"Are you?"

"I'm not robbing cradles." Already. "Besides, I'm not the marrying type. And she's after something serious." She deserves so much better than me. "I'm not pursuing any. romantic involvement with her." 

"Let's hope she's got as much brains as you've bored us with, then, and she gets you into her bed quickly. Why, Severus, even my father has excerpted her from his all-encompassing disgust for Mudb—Muggleborns. I'm sure he'd be ready to host your engagement party at the Manor. I can see it from here. Bellatrix would be splendid at the meat-carver's station."

They'd exchanged a chuckle. "Seriously, Severus. Even Father was in favor of your courting her. He recognized you as kindred spirits, and she'd make nice powerful little wizards, if you're not particular about blood status."

"Why don't you go after her yourself, then?"

"There was a time I would have, but Astoria would have my skin. And I do happen to be very particular about blood status." 

********

Severus had been incommunicado for a week, then Flooed in with his best impassive face plastered on.

"Your ring," he'd stated blandly, as he put the velvet box on Draco's desk.

"Did you spend all this time cooped up with her? Severus, my dear." But the banter had died on Draco's lips as he'd seen his godfather's ashen face. Voldemort resuscitated would have at least provoked a will to fight. here the man was utterly, totally lifeless. Carved out. Undone. 

Lucius, called in by his son, had uncharacteristically flown into a rage, and sworn vengeance on the witch even though Severus kept denying her involvement in any dark scheme to destroy or humiliate him.

"No? We've spent two years indulging this Mudblood, taking her along in our outings, treating her as one of ours, and she was leading you on all the way? She was given a shot at the best man I ever knew, and she teased you for two years? Two. Years? For nothing? I can. I will tame her for you, Severus. You'll get her on her knees, as she should have been for the last two years already. This will be but a token of gratitude for."

Severus had interposed himself. "It was I who sent her away." Desperate pride held him upright. "I sent her away."

He wasn't lying, Malfoy decided after looking his friend in the eyes. The devious Mudblood had somehow convinced Snape she was too good for him, and he, the hopeless fool, had played into her hands. But Lucius would see the situation set right, for friendship's sake. And a little Life Debt, too.

Draco had watched bemused as, for the months after, Severus blocked Lucius' attempts to find Granger, who had all but disappeared from Wizarding London. A bet over an antique charm pronunciation had granted Severus—and Granger—a reprieve, and Malfoy was bound by his Unbreakable to leave the girl alone. To this day, Draco still thought it could have gotten very personal between his father and Granger. Lucius had only begun to see her as more than annoying furniture when she'd become Snape's almost constant companion during the apprenticeship, and, together with most of his prejudices concerning her, he'd shed his usual unflappability. With typical arrogance he'd pegged her for the medicine Severus needed, and on this basis he'd cultivated her for his friend's sake and not for his own amusement.

She was exactly the type of witch he'd keep in luxury for one or two months, until she'd fall in love with him and get humiliated before, and ousted just after. Lucius would have taken extra pleasure in breaking Granger—who'd since then resurfaced as an esteemed environmentalist in this Muggle Harvard university everybody thought so much of—as an act of vengeance over her treatment of Severus, and her brilliance. Lucius Malfoy was perhaps the one man alive who best loved to destroy what he had loved. and Lucius, since his second Azkaban stint, wasn't the most balanced wizard around.

But Draco still loved his father. "That's it, Sev. Either you bed the next witch to come in through the door within forty-eight hours, or Father gets to go after Granger. He'll bring you the remains, I'm sure."

He knew the older man missed at least five or six heartbeats at that, but all the visible response he got was a smirk.

"Well, some witch's going to get lucky tonight, then. And mark my words. This is the last time I agree to such a stake."

"Done." Draco tilted his head at "it" as they shook hands. "It?"

Severus repressed a wave of boredom at the thought of spending one more night with one of those forward types. But. It would ensure minimum heartbreak. But. He was so bored. He let his nose wrinkle itself in distaste. But. It would protect Hermione by winning the bet effortlessly, maybe pleasantly, even. He turned his head towards "It".

His companion's hand tightened on his biceps. "No," he breathed. "The deal was, 'whoever comes through the door'. Your next girlfriend just came in, Godfatherrrrr."

Severus didn't bother to turn around at once. It had taken him almost five years after the War to be able to sit with his back to a door, and he wasn't relinquishing the small luxury. Then he heard the newcomer's voice and whipped around so fast his hair flew around his head like a shampoo advertisement.

At first glance, the newcomer was clad like "It". Heavy boots, but flat-heeled and caked with mud. Ripped jeans that probably hadn't been so in the morning, considering the. unfortunate placement of the tears, and the plain cotton panties visible underneath. A flannel plaid shirt was tucked tight around her body and into her pants, and the witch was shaking all over. Her hair haloed her head like dried baby's breath twigs. If you looked really well, several real twigs were caught in it.

"I'll take the mineralogy doctor," Severus said with a jerk of his head.

"Too late. You get the witch who just went through the door."

"I need a hot chocolate please, a toasted cheese sandwich, and a towing truck for my car. Urgently." Her voice was stressed up as she tried to explain the location of the stuck car in broken Romanian, and Snape wondered why she didn't cast a Warming Charm over herself and a Repairing Charm over her car instead of paying to get it towed. For that matter, he wondered why she had to use the stupidly expensive Muggle wheeled appliance when Apparating was for free. She'd gotten much better at Apparition, the last he remembered. But he had much more urgent matters to take care of.

"Not her. She's off the game. `It' it is." Snape said in his best Snape voice. Any lesser wizard, or one less intent to force him out of the shell he'd retreated into when Granger had left, would have relented. But Draco had just got his own birthday present from Merlin himself, and. he was a Malfoy.

He shook his head negatively. Smug.

Snape was hissing. "What is she doing here?" He'd checked the list of participants before agreeing to Draco's invitation.

"She comes on the Muggle quota. She needs the address for a research grant at Harvard. it's really important to her. You didn't check the Muggle lists, didn't you?"

The little bastard had known all the way, seethed Snape. Maybe he'd arranged it.

"I swear to you, I didn't know she'd be coming here, of all places. Didn't even fathom she knew the place. but anyway. Severus. She's single, she's the right age, and she's the first witch to cross the door. You don't mean to tell me she's a virgin, do you?" He had to fight to keep the snigger out of his words.

Severus shrugged. "I wouldn't know, but she's off the game." There was only one reason for her to be here, and ingredients gathering wasn't it. She'd wanted to reminisce, too. Hadn't she gotten over him yet? His heart was beating wildly, and he fleetingly asked himself whether his death would cancel the bet, or free Lucius to go after her. "For the same reason we excluded your mother."

"The right comparison would be Astoria, and we didn't exclude her. Come on. You know it won't help. The bet stands. Or. is she a prostitute?"

The flicker of pain and outrage on the older man's face convinced him. He had to get Granger for his friend. He just had to get Severus to make a move, actually. The girl had been smitten with Severus since she was a teenager.

"Why don't we just go over and nicely say hello to your next girlfriend, Sev?" Draco was already up and in motion, and Severus followed suit to avoid bloodshed. She'd certainly hex the boy into the historical woodwork if she heard 'girlfriend.' Maybe she'd hex him, too, but he just couldn't remain seated when she was so close, and Draco advanced on her.

Seen in profile, she looked tired, cold and insecure. It was nothing compared to the sheer panic that flashed in her eyes when Draco tapped her shoulder and she craned her head, taking them both in. She mastered it quickly, though, and held out a scratched, grimy hand for a businesslike handshake. "Profes—Severus. Draco. Great organization you got running, Draco. You found your calling. The check-in was incredibly smooth, and I saw they already uploaded my presentation on the Conference site. The sound, though..."

"Did you already go and check the sound system? It's not supposed to be hooked till tomorrow morning." Draco seethed internally. Insufferable know-it-all. He'd checked the sound earlier in the day and found it wanting, indeed. The sound contractor was under death threats unless he provided an alternative by the morrow. Goodfoy Events never disappointed.

"Why do you need it when you can Sonorus, though?" He tried to divert her attention. "Or fix your car by yourself instead of putting yourself in the hands of a local mechanic? I know you faced the Dark Lord and all that, but dealing with a Muggle mechanic? That's brave, Granger."

What was it that had flickered in her eyes, as they flitted over Severus before settling again on the blond? "I am," her tone was as self-sufficient and as insufferable as when she was twelve, "conferencing on behalf of a Muggle institution, and am participating in the conference as part of the Muggle quota. I won't cut corners. While I'm here, I'll do it the Muggle way. All of it. I'd have thought you'd thank me."

Organizing conferences with both Muggle and Wizarding lecturers was worse than brokering peace between North and South Korea. And Muggles did have quite large a chip on their shoulders, even if their intellectual achievements and scientific knowledge often bested their Wizard counterparts'. Something to do with not being able to Apparate, maybe. Poor sods.

"I do thank you, on Draco's behalf. As a token of appreciation, would you let me fix your car for you? I can drive you back to the hotel if you want. The Muggle way." He'd learned to drive in the hope of impressing her, and eventually her Muggle family if they managed to restore their memories, but never got to use the skill. Maybe this was his opportunity? Soothe her, drive her, bed her. Obliviate her. He knew quite a lot about backseat calisthenics, too. He could be in his bed, with his bet in his pocket, in three hours, he thought before realizing he'd much rather have her in his bed. This would still win him the bet, too.

"No thank you, gentlemen. This wonderful host," she made a kind of intense eye contact with the barman, "just notified me the tow truck will be there in ten minutes. I'll wait, but don't feel obliged to." Severus would have nibbled crumbs from her still shaking hands and knelt in thanks, and felt about as hazed as the barman, who kept nodding at her blindly. It wasn't an Imperius, but the effect was damn close.

An uneasy silence ensued, which she compounded by pulling a sheaf of notes from her bag. "I do give an address tomorrow, Draco. I'm sure you want me to be ready."

"Well. I'll leave you at it then. Severus, will you be the gentleman and see this young lady home? And by the way. I updated my father. He's waiting in delight and anticipation." The blond went out the door with a wiggle of his elegant fingers. 

"It" followed the scene with naked interest. 

Hermione sat at a small table. "You don't need to wait on me, Severus," his name was still uneasy on her lips. After all, they'd agreed on given names only at the end of the apprenticeship, which had left a week for their relationship. After the Debacle Dinner, they had, in essence, stopped communicating.

"It's both my responsibility and my pleasure," he said.

"I'd really rather you'd not. I need to go over these notes. You wouldn't want me to bring shame on my education, would you?"

"You're all on the Muggle side now. Why should anything you say reflect on me?" He surprised himself with the bitterness of his voice. Her abandonment? It did sting. She'd turned her back on everything Wizard after the end of the apprenticeship. On her remarkable Potions skills he'd honed with such repressed passion, on all the world they'd risked their lives to save but a few years before. On him. he'd only said he wasn't looking for a relationship, not that he wanted her to stop talking to him.

"I think you'd be interested in hearing my speech, though," she mused aloud. Her voice was also tinged by cynicism, and he wanted to hug and kiss her senseless, erase whatever had made her so similar to him in bitterness. He had to win this bet and get her out of his mind. Forthwith.Get himself out of her mind, rather. Because what would his mind do if it couldn't think about her? 

"The tow truck will manage. Come back with me. We'll Side-Along. Don't think for an instant I didn't cotton to what you did to the bartender. He had no idea what he was nodding at. I thought you didn't use magic?"

Again this half-aggressive, half-dismissive stare. And something else he couldn't call anything but hidden fear. A hint of a smirk. She'd really improved her smirks under his tutelage.

"I'll manage, Severus. Really. Good night." She repressed a shiver.

He didn't dare to offer her his sweater. "Until tomorrow, then. I'll be sure to come for your address."

Her smile was both alluring and wistful as she looked at the cold March night through the window. He waited long enough, Disillusioned outside, to see her exchange a few words with the barman and exit the bar, forlornly trudging to the end of the road to where a taxi was waiting. 

********

The Ausculto charm he'd put on her room tingled at 2 a.m. when she came in. It showed her cold, exhausted, and terribly sad, cleaning her muddy boots the Muggle way—Come. On. Was there no limit to her self-rightfulness?—and crying herself to sleep. It tingled again at half past six. The first light dawned grey and misty over the beautiful beaches under the hotel, and an open window let in bitingly cold salty sea wind. Yawning, he slipped on jeans and a black sweat shirt, and went stalking her. 

She was warmly dressed, hands tucked in her fleece jacket's pockets as she went down the wooden stairs down to the beach, then veered to her right to the forbidden beach on the other side of the sand hills, the one surrounded by billboards in all touristy languages warning of dangerous currents and a total bathing interdiction.

She didn't get close to the water though, but sat on the top of a dune overlooking the sea, once again looking. alone. For the next hour, Snape watched her from afar as she fluidly moved from one yoga pose to another, straining her body against commonly acknowledged limits of suppleness and strength, so ensconced in her own concentration he couldn't even pick stray vibrations from her magical signature, the one that was so similar to his. the one he'd so enjoyed basking in. 

She had finally reached the immobile meditation stage, sitting cross-legged towards the rising sun and the beginning of the day's heat, when voices ran down the wooden stairs. 

It was a British couple, in their early thirties. "Come on, Sweetie, nobody's coming to this beach, ever. We can have ourselves a grand time, here. Like I promised! Something we won't forget." He was red-haired, stocky with the beginning of a paunch under his sweater and swimming trunks, and his long arms all but encircled the bony blonde as he half pushed her down the stairs and towards the water. 

"But they say it's dangerous on the signs." She would sound like Petunia Dursley in a few years.

"Don't you trust me? I'll rescue you."

They went down the stairs laughing.

Hermione didn't budge as they passed her, and by the time they were down on the beach, they were past hearing range. They undressed to their swimming wear, and the man pulled his partner in the water with him, splashing at her and pushing her further and further into the water. From afar, it looked as a half-struggle, but they were soon tearing at each other eagerly, squealing from time to time in glee, louder and louder. 

Hermione's eyes were still closed against the sun in her face. They opened at the noise, and she spent several instants looking at them, her expression unreadable. Then she closed her eyelids again and turned so as not to face the scene, facing the seashore at another angle. Her eyes whipped open again as the couple shrieked in an altogether different tone, washed away by a great wave and sucked in the direction of the open sea. The man began to roar for help.

Severus watched. They merited a lesson. He'd let the stupid dunderheads flounder a little, maybe swallow some water, and then he'd intervene. Or maybe he'd let Granger run the show, see how Ms. High-and-Mighty managed everything on the Muggle side.

Hermione stood, looking helplessly on as the couple wielded their arms, trying to find a footing and getting toppled again and again. Her eyes darted from the swimmers to the path towards the hotel. At least ten minutes to the reception desk on the up path, if you ran fast. She got up and began running, but down, and veered to the left towards a shack with beach paraphernalia. She ran fast, he remarked idly, interested in which object she'd charm and send at them to keep the Muggle pretense.

When she came back to the point where the couple had left their clothes, she was holding a roll of rope. She secured one end to the "Bathing Forbidden" sign, stripped down to her underwear, and knotted the other end of the rope around her waist. Such an obtuse, mule-headed swot he'd never seen. She was going to go into the freezing, dangerous water just to prove her Muggle-living point when nobody was even around to see it? Maybe Lucius was right after all, and Muggle-borns were irremediably different and a danger to the Wizarding world. 

She wasn't such a good swimmer either, he noted, or the currents were really strong. Or, she was laying it on too strong to hide her magic, as if the sinking fools would note anything. By now, he was royally angry at her. She struggled towards the bathers, who were inexorably getting washed a little farther from the shore with each wave cycle. They'd stopped screaming, and instead tried to swallow great gulps of air between the waves, under which the woman was now powerlessly rolling each time a roll crashed over them. They lost their footing again and again. At the end of what seemed a very long time, Hermione got near them. The man grabbed at her in a despaired, bearish embrace. While fighting the waves, Hermione showed the woman how to hold on to the rope linking her to the beach, and progress towards the shore. The surf and the out-current were getting stronger with the ebb tide, and flotsam flowed to the open sea.

Another roll of powerful water. The couple lost their footing again, dropped the rope, and resurfaced just outside Hermione's reach. They stretched entreating hands at her, and after a few seconds of hesitation she undid the knot around herself, looped the end of the line around one of her wrists, and held out her hand to them. The couple used her body as leverage to get to the rope, and from there, hand to hand, to shore. Severus softly swore under his breath as the man pawed her on his way to the cable. 

Slowly, Hermione began her own advance towards the beach, pulling herself back hand over hand. When the man got to shore he ran to the clothes, and in his clumsy, cold hastiness, he toppled the signpost. The rope wasn't tethered any more. At the same moment, another wave crashed upon Hermione, washed back with her, and let her out much farther from the beach. She tried the rope again, but found it slack. She began swimming in earnest, in a studied, lap-practice crawl which enabled her to stay in place, but never to overcome the current and get closer to the beach. Her end of the rope rose and fell with her arm, weighing her down. 

Severus, clenched-jaw, willed the idiot to quit behaving like a spoiled child and use her magic before she got exhausted or swallowed too much water to utter a spell. He willed the weak excuse for a man she'd saved to go after the rope again. He swore again.

The man was wading knee-deep, futilely reaching in the direction of the receding rope, but never advancing further into the water. The woman whipped out a mobile phone from her bag and began screaming in it. "She's drowning, I'm telling you. Can't you understand English? Drown! Water! Beach! Fast! Come now!"

Severus was beside himself with anger. Why wouldn't she use magic? Viciously, he muttered a spell and watched the sea rolls rise higher, stronger, the flotsam dance eerily on the surface as the undercurrents strengthened and tore at the girl. She'd use her magic, now, he hissed to himself.

For five or six long minutes, the three of them watched entranced as Hermione fought the sea and lost, little by little. One after the other, the strong waves crashed over her, their waters rolling her towards the beach, only to suck her farther away with each retreating current. Yet she fought with all her ebbing strength. Her arm movements were less coordinated now, and she rested longer and longer between them. Her head, much smaller than he was used to seeing it now all the hair was plastered to it—long strands getting in her face and mouth, choking her—stayed underwater longer and longer after each wave. The woman had closed her mobile and was gnawing at her nails, hunched over herself on the shore.

The stupid chit was going to swim Muggle until she drowned.


	2. Wanting you so much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Was he so full of spite as to take her magic away from her? Or did she do it to herself?

The stupid chit was going to swim Muggle until she drowned. 

_Serves her right_ , he thought viciously even as his body began running the downwards slope at maximum speed. He could magically pull her out of the water, or calm the waves and slip out unnoticed, but she'd know he'd been there anyway after she felt his magic. His thoughts were half-formed, flashing and disappearing in his mind at the rhythm of his pounding feet. 

Even as he ran, he imagined the feel of her wet, toned body against his, the rough caress of the waves pushing them against each other. Was this why he'd chosen to go in, he asked himself as he toed off his boots and roughly pushed away the coward coming at him? Because she was practically naked, and wet, and would flail and snuggle against him? Without conscious realization his lips stretched, feral against his teeth as some very deep, atavistic instinct pushed him towards the female in distress, and he hissed at the cold of the water against his newly wet belly.

The current had strengthened again, and he let it push him seawards, struggling to keep abreast and using all his considerable strength to get nearer her. No way he could swim back without magic, even alone. When he finally got to her she was gasping and coughing, going under with each tug of the water, exhausted. He pulled her to him backwards in the swimming rescue position, intending to let her rest, but she struggled feebly.

"Too... too heavy. You'll drown."

He turned her around to face him, using magic to make them bob with the waves even though the water ruthlessly beat at them, and would have rolled mere humans under and towards the sea in seconds.

"I have no idea what deeply stupid, twisted game you're playing here, Granger. But I'm using magic if you won't, and if you protest I'll fly us both outta here to the eyes of all the hotel to see", he said, his eyes on the small rescue team from the hotel, far away still. "Now you're going to let me tow you ashore like the little imbecile you are, and do exactly what I tell you afterwards. Understood?" Unwillingly (for her) their arms were twined against each other, hugging each other's body as they bobbed upright in the water. Her body felt colder even than the cold water, and weak, with surges of nervous strength. 

Two unconnected thoughts flashed through his tortured mind. The first was wondering if the other idiot standing knee-deep in the cold water there was jealous? Here they were, Granger and he, exactly in the optimal position to do what the fat coward had pulled his horse of a wife in for. The second? He'd been smugly happy for a flash about his own black boxer shorts, thinking he wouldn't have to deal with embarrassing transparency when going out, like Granger certainly would. 

The blackness of his shorts couldn't do anything about three-dimensional anatomy, though, and now the same transparency of her bra was wreaking havoc on his decency, cold water or not. She was too near, far too near for comfort. Or much too far, if comfort was one had in mind. Get on with it! Accomplish the bet, standing in the water, while she was hazed? He'd deal with the consequences later. He focused his eyes on her, saw her shaking with cold, her hands and lips blue.

Abruptly he turned her round again, assumed the rescuer's pose, her body angled just out of his so as to avoid any delicate contact. "Kick with your legs if you want to help. And for Merlin's sake, breathe. And cast a warming charm on us." He actually had to use quite a lot of magic to infuse his swimming with enough strength to get them both ashore. As soon as he could he slumbered to his feet and held her by the waist, helping her to walk as her exhausted legs buckled under her. After all, she'd spent a full hour in grueling exercise even before getting into the water.

Then they were standing by the fallen signpost. She was bluish with cold and exhaustion, legs shaking, and he nastily cut short the cowards' protestations of interest. He turned her around so his back was to the other couple and the oncoming gaggle of would-be rescuers. "Hermione, you must come with me. You're exhausted. You're cold. We have to get you in shape for your address this afternoon. For Merlin's sake, use your magic!"

Once again, fear, exhaustion, and some kind of fight warred in her eyes before she rested her head on his shoulder in sheer weakness, her whole body shaking with cold even though she was draped in his sweater. He half-dragged her up the sand hill and into the hotel. 

 

********

Once in her room, he cast a Warming Charm and gathered her in his arms again. As their bare skin touched, the temperature in the room fell another few notches, and he felt a weak, hesitant tingle move up his arm to his shoulders, his chest.

"Oh." Her eyes opened in awe. Her body and the air in the room went colder and colder, but they tingled all over as she went on shaking. She looked reverential. Defiant. Exhilarated. Overwhelmed as she sank against him again.

He knew the phenomenon well. "Hermione. What is happening to your magic?" He shook her slightly to get her attention as, once again, she rested her head in the crook of his shoulder. This time they were seated on her bed. Heat coursed through his body, but the beating of his heart was more than pure lust.

The question went through her like a bolt of lightning. She twisted herself free, scooted to the other end of the bed and sat with her back against the headboard, arms modestly hugging the bedcover over her bare legs, knees to her chest. "I'm fine." 

"Granger."

Her sand-plastered curls buried themselves in the crook of her knees. The temperature rose, barely. Her hands were tight over the cover, white-knuckled, and if he hadn't known the formidable Granger so well he'd have sworn she was stifling sobs.

"Hermione, you need a hot bath, a nap, a warm meal, strong coffee, and to give your address in four hours." And a good tumble in between the hotel-laundry smelling sheets, now dirtied with sand. Not necessarily in that order. 

She raised her head. Her eyes were reddened, but it could be the sea salt. "I can hardly shower with you in the room." 

She hadn't asked about her wand. It had been nowhere on the beach, either.

"I'll turn around until you're in the bathroom, which you'll kindly refrain from locking. I'm not leaving before I see some food in you, and you stop shaking like a leaf."

He sat transfixed, watching her mind will her body to stop trembling. Had she gotten that good at wandless magic? The tingle, the cold, her unwillingness to save herself from drowning, or from dealing with a Romanian mechanic... which was certainly worse, if he knew anything about it. She'd even cleaned her boots by hand.

"What. Happened. To. Your. Magic?"

She pinched her lips, looked inwards, and stopped trembling. Just like that. Yet her lips were still blue. Her expression turned, for the first time in almost twenty years he'd known her, ugly. Her eyes squinted furiously at him. 

"Maybe you tell me, Snape."

The venom in her voice... Bellatrix had found her match. "You don't have your wand. It wasn't on the beach. You don't use magic."

"We went over that yesterday evening, no?" Fear under her aggressive barks.

"I can feel it ebb and rise." He was thinking aloud, lost in the hazelnut speckles of her irises, mellowing himself to catch the echoes of that magic he'd felt before, and wasn't feeling any more. 

"Oh my God. I was right... It was you." Her eyes were suddenly saucer-like and appalled, but almost immediately they shrank back to folded, malevolent slits. "I never wanted to believe it was you. Sonofab..." 

Could exposure to cold water affect the intellectual capabilities, or had she gone bonkers before, when she'd decided to abandon magic?

"Why don't you complete your vengeance, Snape? Like the good melodrama villain you apparently aim to be. Just spell it for me, how you did that. Afterwards I'm sure you'll have a great laugh with Draco, and whoever's in on the joke. Is that why you didn't let me drown? Didn't want to miss gloating time? You have it."

"Granger. Get a grip. What. Happened. To. Your. Magic?"

"You tell me, you thrice-damned bastard! Pity Nagini didn't bite harder. Pity I brought you back from the Shack. Pity I—" She was practically frothing at the mouth. 

Not a time for niceties... "Legilimens."

Her barriers were rough, very different from the sophisticated, smooth Occlumency techniques he'd taught her. Solid, too, but not enough to hold one such as him at bay. He finally gained entrance, finding vicious pleasure in using much more power than usually considered safe for the recipient of the spell.

Nothing. 

Nothing. 

Nothing. Her mind was blank, a perfectly wiped sheet of greyish white mist. Empty. He retreated for a second, concentrated on her eyes again, got a blink of smugness in her expression, and then he thundered in again, deviously, surprising her with a kind of entry he'd devised for Voldemort himself. He got it all tumbling. Himself. Himself in hundreds, maybe thousands of vignettes. She remembered how he blew his nose, for goodness' sake. The exact angle of his head as her sniffed over her cauldron. Pictures he'd never thought somebody would care to remember, and pictures he'd have died of shame if he'd known.

He was asleep on his bench, head on the white lab table tile, and he could see, as if from her eyes, her hand brushing a tendril of his own hair away from his face.

He was ensconced in his reading, and whipped his head up as she arrived, with a smile so genuine and happy he wondered if maybe she'd imagined the scene. Was he capable of such unguarded, undiluted joy? He'd been, towards the end of the apprenticeship.

Their last meal at the restaurant. The Debacle Dinner. This one he skimmed over, reluctant to relive the stilted awkwardness, the false starts, and the abject end. He did feel her acute sadness, though, the deepening pit in her stomach, the tears which had choked her and that she'd masked as choking on her drink. He'd remembered that one. The slapping at her back and sneering at her had been almost the only non-awkward moment of the evening.

He passed over the goodbyes. Mercifully, for himself more than for her. Searched her mind to know how she remembered the separation, though. Anyway every instant of it was etched in his mind, the constant companions of his sleepless nights... 

He dared to seek in her mind her memories of the night after their separation though, and he saw. The sleepless sobbing night. Her mind still remembered the rawness of her throat from too much crying, the sting in her eyes, the pressure in the sinuses, and the pain of sorrow in her chest.

The panic the day after. The incomprehension when she'd woken up and tried a string of simple charms, every one of which had just failed, or necessitated two and three tries to achieve elementary results any first-year mastered, the growing worry, the swishing of her wand in vain. the Healer's perplexed face.

 

And then he was out of her mind. Violently thrown out, by sheer mental force.

"It's gone. Okay, Professor Snape? No magic." She held out a bloodless hand at him, aggressively. "Hermione Granger, Muggle. Nice to meet you."

"You're not a Muggle," he spat.

"Oh, no? How do you call a person born of Muggle parents, whose all family is Muggle, and who has no magic?" She stopped a second, holding him with the simple strength of her gaze. "A Muggle! Ten points to Professor Snape. Don't baby me, Snape," she eructed. "I felt your magic run through me before. You know. Knew from the beginning even I refused to believe it, when you set your little parting gift curse on me, although I'm damned if I understand why. Do you want to hear me say it, too? I am a Muggle. Happy?" 

"I have no idea why you would feel the need to put on such a ridiculous show, Granger. I certainly did nothing to block your magic, assuming it's even possible. And in any case, I felt your magic flow when I touched you right now. "

"It was yours. I haven't had any magic for—" 

"It was yours." He pummeled the words into her.

"How would you know? They're—" she bit her lips.

"I know, Hermione. I know we have the same magical imprint." _I spent enough nights musing on the sameness of your magic, of your very soul, with mine. I spent enough time reflecting on the similarities of our souls, and on the lusciously different body it was packaged in, and what I wanted to do to it._ Aloud he said, "but it was your magic we felt. Definitely. Even though I didn't feel it when-" Before. On the dune where I was stalking you. He felt so tired.

"It was yours."

"No. And the temperature did go down when we touched. Didn't you feel it was your energy flowing? Are you that—"

They looked at each other, seeing the cogs and the wheels in each other's mind turning. Naturally neither would utter the words aloud, because the conclusion was little better than an all-out Life Bond. Similar magic, which disappeared when one of the pair abandoned the other. there were a few legends about true lovers meant for one another and separated by Fate, but... his magic hadn't suffered after the separation. Probably the only part of him that hadn't suffered. According to the lore it was the more loving partner whose magic used to suffer... It should certainly have been his magic disappearing. No? His mind reeled. 

"Wha'ever," she said with a Yankee twang. "Can I go shower now?"

He made a show of turning around to face the wall, pottered in the room until she emerged, clad in jeans, socks and a warm sweater.

"Hermione." He made an effort to soften his voice. "Do you- did you mean you believed I had taken your magic from you?" He pushed a cup of hot hotel tea in her hands, which he'd prepared from the small electric kettle.

She faced him bravely. "I do not know what to think," she stated. After we parted that night, I-" She blushed. "Well, you've seen it all now." A deep breath. "I had wrongly assumed that dinner would be the beginning of a romantic relationship between us." She held a hand to silence him. "Don't apologize, you were a perfect gentleman all along, hardly responsible for my own foolishness. And if you led me on all that time, for reasons I can fathom but don't like to, more fool me. And I've gotten over it, anyway." Liar, she thought to herself.

He nodded, a small acknowledgement the only good thing he'd really wanted from life had been his for the taking, and now it was too late. That's what he'd wanted anyway, no? Why he'd sent her on her way after the apprenticeship. No use saddling her with one such as him, if he loved her. But it hurt, still.

She squared herself against the headboard again. "When I woke up, my magic was lower than I ever remembered it. Depleted. I thought it was commensurate with my general feeling. You can smirk," she shrugged. "I remember how you like to gloat over your feminine conquests. I was distressed, like any retarded schoolgirl would be, after she'd nursed a teacher crush for more than ten years, and seen it collapse. I thought it would pass, if I could just focus on my work."

He opened his mouth to say something.

Again she held out a hand. "Let me talk, please. I thought I'd never tell this to anybody, least of all to you. Since you've broken into my mind, the least you can do now is to listen. If you go gloating about it to Draco, if destroying my magic was part of those sick little cruel bets you enjoy with the Malfoys, I can't help it. At least I'll have taken it out. I'm not part of the Wizarding World anymore, so I could care less."

He would have talked. His arms ached with the need to hold her, to sooth the misery she was leaking in waves. He was, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words. The ingrained reflexes of his spy training made him eager to hear as much as he could before committing himself.

"Long story short," she breathed, "at the end of the summer I still had no magic, except for little bursts here and there." _When I thought about our good times together_. "So, together with my Healer, we thought change would do me good. I used this recommendation you'd given me for the exchange program between Muggle and Wizarding university programs, and I got myself off to Harvard. It was supposed to be for one year, but at the end of it? The most useful thing I could do with my wand was to tuck it in to hold my hair. And then Professor Gershowitz offered me a Ph.D. scholarship—Chemistry does have a lot to bring to environmental studies, as I hope you'll see from my address today. The Black Sea is sick, very sick with Muggle pollution, and it's affecting Muggle and magical life forms. We developed algo-"

"I'll come to your bloody presentation, Granger. Kindly focus on the subject at hand."

"Oh, that? It's over. No magic. I'm happy at Harvard doing my Muggle thing. So where have you been all this time?" Her moment of weakness was over, the terrible ache hidden under a smooth, hard shell. It took one to know one, though, and he could feel the distress of her inner soul under the smooth varnish.

"You mentioned believing that your ailment was my doing."

She shrugged airily, but she wasn't skilled enough a liar to hide from him the undertone of pained doubt in her eyes. "Nonsense. What does one have to do to get some real coffee around here?" She made a show of looking for shoes.

"Granger." The smoothness of his low voice, the tired strength of it, the indomitable authority. The tightening in her belly as he pulled at the most intimate strings of her being. She was falling for him again, she realized with fear. Again? Phah. You never got up again, just crawled upright. You pathetic bookworm. Sentimental spinster. Almost thirty, and you haven't shaken your fourth-year crush on your dark teacher. Grow a spine. Crush it, once and for all.

She'd had to subdue her fears to enter the water in the morning, to risk her life. It was nothing compared to the effort she was facing now. She was going to drive Severus away, irremediably. Maybe afterwards, she'd finally be able to start her life. Duller, bleaker than what she'd kept dreaming about all these years, but a life nonetheless.

"Well, there was a correlation with the end of our collaboration. I had—wrongly, I know—surmised that our relationship would take another turn. A more personal turn, after the apprenticeship was over. I am detached enough now to analyze this scientifically, Severus. Years have passed, and life has happened. You asked a question, so I'll answer it honestly." With your kind of underhanded, self-serving honesty. "Of course I looked into the causes of this malady, as I thought of it back then. It could be a kind of depression, although, honestly, I'm... me. I'd weathered worse, including the final separation from my parents and Fred's death. My magic had always remained strong. I've never seen myself as the romantic type pining all my life away because of unrequited puppy love." 

She allowed herself a sniggering chuckle. Take that in your yellow, crooked teeth, she thought wildly. I don't bow to unrequited love. I wouldn't have become no Death Eater for no Lily. "Harvard grants excellent health coverage. I went to the best Healers, in Britain and in the States, and eliminated any physical causes. At the end of the day, everything pointed to a kind of energy block, either from a curse, or something else like that. An accident. I researched many alternative theories of energy, of course—Yoga, Reiki, Energy Healing—you name it. With the years I developed alternative skills, physical and otherwise. Quite more than your usual Muggle, but no Hogwarts material." She squinted at him. "Why did you follow me this morning?"

He nodded somberly. The cold in the room when they held each other, the way she tingled. If she'd researched energy healing, they both knew what it meant. His bet was in his pocket. Yet the sadness looming over him was worse than any fury. 

As a dare he got closer to her, touching her only with energy even though his body ached for contact.

She let out a small, anguished moan that sent his own body into overdrive. The tingle was more like the Hogwarts' Express whistle now. Another effort, the lightest physical contact, and sparkles would erupt between them.

She squinted at him. "Well. Appears it was you, after all. I haven't been able to get this kind of response. Ever."

"I swear I didn't curse you, Hermione." I cursed at you, for leaving. "I never messed with your magic, nor tried to." Nor with your feelings. "Why would I have done so?"

She shrugged. "It didn't make sense to me, either. Oh, theoretically there are at least two good explanations for that."

He quirked an eyebrow.

She braced herself. "You're not the man with the most straightforward psyche, you know. One explanation would be that, assuming you did feel some attraction to me and didn't want to act on it—if you didn't want a Mudblood, for example, or if being tied with Harry Potter's friend was too much for you—you'd never be attracted to a non-magical woman. Maybe this was a way to ensure you wouldn't want me. Or if you felt I'd rejected you, or used you. Or—"

He couldn't believe the hurt he was feeling at her simple words. She was simply telling him she thought him psychopathic enough to destroy her so as not to be attracted to her any more. "Why not talk to me?"

"If you were such a man, if you'd done that, I never wanted to talk to you again, certainly not to beg anything from you." Even if it meant crying every single day for the rest of my life. She shrugged. "Anyway, I didn't really believe in it. If you had, at some point you'd have come to gloat over me, without my needing to seek you out." She leveled her eyes at him, braced for a blow. "Maybe this time has come?" Here I am, in all my weakness. Try and vanquish me, now. 

"And if I hadn't done it?" His growl was harsher than any scream.

Her shoulders stiffened. "I am not proud. But after the way we parted, I wasn't about to seek you out again and ask favors. At the beginning I waited for it to come back by itself. I gave it a week, then ten days, and as time went by and we weren't in touch, well. You never sought me out, either."

He'd waited a week for her to call him after the Debacle. After that, he'd given the ring back to Draco. He'd been hovering over the Floo for days on end afterwards, too.

She'd been like him, too proud to turn to him after his rejection of her, even if the price was so astronomically high. Even if he'd done it only for her own good. He'd botched it, once again.

Maybe for Muggle-borns it was different.

Right.

"You were wrong, Granger. Abysmally wrong, on all counts. As usual." As if he'd hurt her on purpose. Although two hours earlier, he'd almost drowned her when he'd unleashed the sea power to force her to use the magic she didn't have anymore. 

She looked small and lonely, but straightened in protest. 

He ignored her. "I would never mess with your magic, unless you were physically trying to kill me." Which you almost did without trying, when you left me without a word in the middle of that street, with the ring burning a hole in my pocket. I was just trying to protect you from myself. 

"I would have been glad to help, had it been in my power." Now he geared himself for the burn of an all-out rejection. "That evening could not have ended differently. I wanted you to see it, that it was in your best interest to move on. but you were so tight in the restaurant, so closed off."

She nodded minutely. "So afraid it would end the way it did."

"This was the most stilted evening we ever had. After Grimmauld Place, of course."

She nodded again. "I was sure you knew about. about how I felt. I thought you were trying to evade it without being unkind, and really, I owed you so much. The apprenticeship, with all the other magic you taught me, the recommendations? You were like a father to me after my own went out of the picture, down to the huge stipend you gave me, and here I was, with twisted feelings. If you'd been into my mind of course you'd want to fly away. I know I don't compare with the other women you go out with."

"If it may reassure you, I never felt anything remotely fatherly for you. My frame of mind as you were concerned was, on the whole, totally unsuitable even for a teacher-student relationship." He cleared his throat. He should shut up, now. "After all, we'd just been freed from the burden of the war. I was but a man, and you were an appetizing young woman. Bright. Kind-hearted. Under my tutelage. And yes, I did catch some of the looks you sent my way. It took some effort not to act upon them, since I, for one, can find no irremediable defect in your appearance. Nothing insurmountable, at least." He could also use the truth as a destabilizing weapon.

The elephant in the room trumpeted with all its might. 

He cleared his throat. "Well. You mentioned, at the beginning of our conversation, that you'd 'grown out of it'. All's well that ends well, then." He didn't try to hide the bitterness in his voice. He had a bet to win, after all.

She nodded so dejectedly that Draco—nay, Lucius, even—would have howled with joy.

"Except I still don't have any magic."

"You do each time we're close." They were smiling at each other now, defiantly, small lopsided smiles in which skittishness warred with amusement and hope. The elephant trumpeted again.

"Let's try," he said again.

"I- I don't have a wand."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I broke it in a fit of pique," she hurried to explain. "And then I couldn't get another one, because you have to try them in the shop, and—"

"Do you mean nobody knows?"

"Harry and Ron do, of course. Ginny. The rest of the Weasleys and Minerva. They suspect something." Her eyes widened. "You're going to tell the Malfoys."

Not if it cost him his life. "Not if we can come to an agreement."

She went ugly at that, her face schooled into slack nothingness. Twice in twenty years, in the space of twenty minutes. "What did you have in mind?"

He held out his hand. "Come here." 

She flinched as if he'd hit her. Swallowed. Slowly, she crossed the few steps to the bed where he was sitting. Her head was rigidly held up, her jaw clenched. He seized her hand in his, pulled her until she was seated near him. "Just relax," he said.

"Is there any other way?"

"You've tried them all, I'd think. Except this one. It's worth a try to get your magic back, I'd say."

All her fixed rigidity dissolved in furious anger. "Oh, come on! You want- You want sex to buy your silence, that's all. Don't try to sugarcoat it with my magic coming back. It's not going to happen, and certainly not that way."

"Who said anything about sex?" His body, his mind, his very soul? They had been clamoring for it for hours, but he'd said nothing aloud.

"Come here." She mimicked him aggressively, nodding at the covers.

In a flash he was standing, looming over her as she remained seated on the bed. His face was even paler than usual, constricted by anger.

"You are a very warped woman, Doctor Granger. On the one hand, you claim to have been in love with me. On the other, you entertain thoughts of my stealing your magic as a kind of twisted vengeance, and you just outright accused me of being the vilest kind of rapist. To use blackmail to get physically intimate with you." He smirked. "Is this the kind of man you fall in love with?"

It was, he realized. Did she really think so little of herself? To fall for somebody like him?

"Oh," she faltered. "You didn't mean-"

"But you did."

"Enough." She raised her head again, facing him proudly. She stood up. Her voice was firm, passionate. "Masks down, Severus. We both know who you are and what you did during the war. What you did before that for twenty years. You cannot pretend you acted like a gentleman when Harry's mother didn't reciprocate your advances. I practically lived with you for three years, and I know how you treat your women. You're not all cream and peaches, and yes, I was aware of that when I fell for you. I fell all the same." She shrugged. "I saw you as a larger-than-life character, with much more bad in you than the usual man and, and incomparably more good. I loved your bravery and the way you used the bad in you to serve the greater good. I was aware I could get burnt, and in one sense it was one more reason for you to push me away. For my protection, the way you'd see it. I was too much of a coward to open my mouth." She shrugged again. "What was the agreement you had in mind, then?"

"Let me try to help you with that magic of yours, which we're both aware flares up when we're touching. Something is blocking your magic, and when we touch, the blocks are shaking, releasing your magic flow, and causing the temperature to drop. Textbook case. Your condition may, indeed, have been caused by emotional havoc. Let's try to remedy this. It may, indeed, lead us to some—ah, intimate situations. I will not take advantage. I will not do, or touch anything you're not comfortable with. We will practice using my wand, which used to fit you just fine. You will refrain," he was hissing now, "from casting aspersions on my character, or from committing suicide for stupid tourists."

"I don't see the quid pro quo. Those are all things you do for me anyway. Where's the compensation?"

"You'll come back help me with a research project. I don't have the patience to locate and then school a new apprentice, assuming I'd find somebody suitable."

Oh. He'd been following her in the morning, too. Maybe trying to find an opening to talk to her? And then he'd braved the waves to save her life in a romantic gesture, instead of just magicking her back to shore. She repressed a shudder at the remembrance of their wet bodies entwined together, quite proud she didn't moan with the neediness spreading from her core.

"If you're sure. The experiment... it could very well be in my interest, too," she said with a dry smile. "If it works."

"So be it. All I ask for is your trust. I shall certainly welcome any mutually beneficial development." They were almost chest to chest now, the tingling almost painful, her eyes hooded and lost in his. She gasped when he took her hand in his, slowly, letting his flesh envelop hers meaningfully. 

Sparks flew. Then they were kissing, and both felt the same tingling course through their bodies, guiding their hands and their mouths, until she let out a strangled sob. He let go of her immediately, and then grabbed her tightly as she almost collapsed.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded. "I can't say I understand it all, but this was definitely magic." She turned to him with a half-smile. Slowly licked her swollen lips. "I can understand your reputation, and why all those witches were so impressed."

He shook his head slowly. His arm was still around her waist, stabilizing her. Or maybe he was holding on to her. "I've never felt this before, either." The words had exited his mouth before he could think about them, and he wasn't talking only about the sparks. "I think," his voice was low and seductive, sending delicious shivers down her spine, "I think it's because your mind has stopped shutting me out."

"Oh." She faltered a little and he strengthened his hold on her. Her eyes widened, took on the dreamy, excited look of a child before a Christmas window dressing. "May I- May I have your wand for a second?" she asked shyly.

He handed it to her, careful not to slip again into dangerous double entendres. Her emotion was visible as she frowned, flexing the wood in her hand. 

"Begin with something simple," he whispered, not wanting to disturb her concentration. 

"Wingardium... Wingardium Leviosa." Her technique and intonation were still perfect, and indeed the pillows over the bed rose gracefully in the air.

After fifteen minutes she'd cooled, warmed, levitated, twisted, Transfigured, sliced, and put together again every single object in the room, laughing like a loon. She held and left his hand by turns, ordered him into the bathroom, only to call him back shrieking, "It's working without you in the room, too!" and kiss him soundly again. Ordered him out to the corridor. Called him in again, all pink cheeks and delighted smile. "Thank you, Severus. Thank you so much!"

The room looked like the aftermath of a mad little witch eighth's birthday party, with glitters, red balloons, and gold-festooned upturned furniture floating softly in the air, and shiny colors chasing each other on the iridescent walls. They were back on the bed in an abandon of laughs and exultation, kissing and holding each other. Guilelessly she moved under him, so his hand glided from her shoulder to her throat. It was so natural to just let it slide down a little more... A cold remembrance washed over him. Slowly, he disentangled himself from the kiss.

She looked at him with pleading eyes, her wet lips swollen and open. Her hand slipped from his shoulder to his breast and she left it there. "What's wrong?"

He sat straight, keeping one of her hands between both of his. He couldn't look her in the eyes. He couldn't stop touching her.

"I asked for your trust."

"You have it," she was still a little breathless, a little hoarse from the kissing, and his body ached to push her back on the bed, cover her, ravish her. The smell of her was driving him mad, and in a deep part of him he felt the need, for the first time in his life, to bare himself and see if that thing hurting inside him could maybe be called a soul again. 

"I haven't been totally honest with you."

Her smile froze.

"Have you ever?"

"No."

She nodded minutely, struggling to hide the pain spreading from her belly to her chest, where only seconds ago only many kinds of pure delight had coursed through her. "And now you wish to be?"

"No. But I have to. I—ah, it would be easy to- to take this to its natural completion, Hermione. And I am conceited enough to believe it would be highly pleasurable for the both of us."

"The trailer was excellent, indeed. So? I'm not expecting you to swear undying love for me, Severus, or ask for my hand." That's exactly what I've been craving for more than ten years, just let me pretend a little while, because I know you're never going to do this for real.

That's exactly what I've been wanting to do, he thought. But you deserve so much better. Yet I am never going to forgive myself, If I don't talk now.

"Are you married?" she asked curiously. "Engaged?"

He chuckled. "Don't insult me. Do I look the marrying type to you?" She tilted her head, accepting again mutely yet another little wound to her stupid schoolgirl dream. The one that refused to die.

"When you met us yesterday at the Lodge, Draco and I had just made a bet."

"Mmm."

"We were quite under the influence of that rotgut they serve there."

"It is potent." 

He fixed his eyes on hers. "We bet—I have thirty-six hours left to bed the first eligible witch that went through the door. That witch happened to be you."

"I see." How proud he was of her, of her self-control. "Define 'eligible'?"

"Witch, 25 to 65, unattached, no virgin, no prostitute. You wouldn't happen to be engaged, by any chance? Or a virgin?"

"Lose your bet."

"I can't."

"Won't."

Was there no end to the depths he had to humiliate himself?

"Can't."

"What is it, Snape? A supply of Ogden's for the next year? I understand with your drinking it's a lot of money.... Still I'll mortgage my house and buy it for you. The whole boatload of it." As she talked the temperature in the room fell again. The welcome tingling of magic disappeared from her veins. The room reverted to its impersonal beige and false gold colors, and the pretty balloons poofed into nothingness. The shredded bedclothes hung limply from the upturned armchairs on the floor.

"The stake," he murmured, "is not something you want to trifle with."

"Why should I care? Your bet, your stakes, no?"

"Not exactly." How could he tell her, that her welfare was so important to him he'd had Lucius give an Unbreakable Vow not to harm her? How could he bear to know she knew the state he'd been in after the Debacle Dinner? "Hermione, please. I'll make it up to you. Name your price."

"What am I? A prostitute?"

"It'd be better, bet-wise," he sneered. He paced, turned. "I wouldn't have told you about the bet if it was the way I saw you. If I didn't respect you," he said stiffly, his innards clenching in self-disgust. "I'd just have completed what we started on this bed, with you as a willing participant. Bet won. End of story."

She was up, arranging her clothes. "Your wand, please." She tapped her foot on the ground when he failed to react. "I'm not going to hurt you." 

Never more than he'd hurt himself. "Please."

He watched impassibly as she tried again and again to magically restore order to the room. Nothing happened. 

She concentrated again on the first pillow. "Wingardium Leviosa." The swish was perfect, the intonation faultless. Nothing happened.

After another five minutes of vain attempts they were both bleak. "It's gone again."

"Would you care to hold my hand again? It may work," he offered through a strangled throat.

"Much easier to call room service and pay for the damage," she replied airily. "Hey," she exclaimed, "I'm a Muggle! The bet is void."

"Do you really want Malfoy to know about your impairment?"

She shrugged defiantly. "Why should I care?"

There was no end to the humiliation he would have to endure by this woman. "The stake, Hermione, is remanding the Unbreakable Lucius gave me not to hurt you."

"Why would Lucius want to hurt me?" Why would you care so much as to extract an Unbreakable Vow from him?

He shrugged. Saw the cogs in her mind turning and clicking. Cut it short.

"It is not relevant now. Do you want, or not, Lucius to know about your impairment?"

She paled. "No."

"Good decision. Don't you dare let him, or Draco, know before this is over." He shuddered inwardly at the mental images of what Lucius would do to a Muggle Hermione. Lucius was still very much a prisoner of his Death Eaters' appetites, which he had precious few occasions to sate. Lucius was slowly gliding into madness, his psyche irremediably fractured by the Dark Mark he'd taken young, the moral destruction it had wreaked on him and his family, and Azkaban's consequences. 

A Muggle alarm sounded from her drawer. "Two hours to my address," she whispered. "Severus, can we please adjourn to this afternoon? Let's say, five o'clock in the Sea Bar on the left side of the lobby? I need to go over my notes."

He bowed and left in deafening silence.


	3. It was supposed to be fun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of Muggle events and long lasting friendship

After half an hour a man rang at his door, bearing a tray laden with the most expensive food available on the room service menu. "Room 218 sends her thanks for the meal you ordered for her, sir. She asked me to bring it to you, with this note."

He tipped and closed the door, opened the carelessly scrawled bit of hotel paper.

S,

Thanks for the meal and your good intentions. I'll buy myself a sandwich. May I suggest you begin to be careful with your money? Malfoy will have a right on it tomorrow, after all. 

H.

He called Draco on his new cell phone, then called room service again.

Within a few minutes, the same bellboy rang at Hermione's door, bearing a tray with one rose, a glass of chilled pomegranate juice, and a note. 

H,

Your presentation has been postponed to tomorrow at 1100. 

In the meantime, would you be amenable to help me eat the food I just ordered? We have a few things to discuss before I'm reduced to stale bread and sea water. My room has been made this morning- the password is 'Wave', or, if you're afraid of your feelings, we can order anew in the lobby, where your virtue shall be protected. 

Pomegranate supports the brain functions.

S

Within ten minutes, the man was back with a note and a small smile. He'd be rich by the end of the day with so many tips.

S, 

Meet me at seven at the Sea Bar in the lobby? We'll still have time to figure out how to deal with this situation. 

H

At three, stomach gnawing at her conspicuous absence, he gave a learned speech based on his latest research. It was brilliant—he knew it—and a crowd surrounded him afterwards. "It" was there, too, in a sophisticated white cashmere sweater under which the merest hint of her bra lace showed, a row of pearls and black capris. She uttered surprisingly intelligent remarks on his talk and suggested continued interaction, "as her own field of research was so close." As she gave him a business card with the name of Dr. Marisa Beinex from Barcelona University, she palmed him a magnetic entrance card to a hotel room, too. At the same time her educated, musical voice underlined the need for in-depth collaboration of researchers. 

"Thanks," he said. "I'll add it to my wallet, with the other three I got today." He turned to the next person before her expression had time to change.

********

At five minutes to seven, he entered the Sea Bar. Granger was seated in a lounge armchair and motioned him over, nowhere as classy or as beautiful as the Spanish witch. And yet. His chest constricted and expanded at the same time, painfully, when he noticed she was animatedly talking with a blondish hulk hovering over her. The younger man stood at his approach, bowing slightly. "Professor Snape. Marcus Creevey, at your service. Mr. Potter sends his best regards, and would you please be kind enough to Floo him tonight, sir."

"Thanks, Marcus." Hermione sounded suave and worldly. "I'm sure I'm perfectly safe with Professor Snape."

"I'll be at the bar, Ms.—Hermione."

"Won't you sit down, Severus? Marcus will keep looking at us. After us. That's what he's here for, after all." 

He sat, fuming.

"I phoned Harry this afternoon." Her eyes were cool and calculating, with a background of mirth. "I explained most of the situation to him. He was kind enough to dispatch one of his most gifted Aurors from the Personal Protection Program. It's Colin Creevey's youngest brother, by the way. He'll escort me until the end of the Conference, and after that, Harry is pulling strings so Malfoy will be banned from entering the United States without proper escort."

She shrugged lightly. Smiled in that American ""Have-a-nice-day-I-don't-care-if-you-fall-dead-outside-the-elevator" way. "So all is for the best, I think. If Lucius comes after me, he'll be duly apprehended. Harry agreed, out of special consideration for you, that Malfoy would be taken to St. Mungo's for mental evaluation and care and not to Azkaban to wait for his trial, if one should be justified, so we might be doing your friend a good turn, too. Of course, there's always the possibility of you, or Draco, talking to him, and getting him to agree to resume the Unbreakable not to harm me."

"What if Malfoy comes for you tomorrow night? When you're alone?"

"Marcus will be sleeping in my room. He's one of Harry's best, you know. I've changed my booking for a couple's, and voila!"

She smiled agreeably again, drank a dainty sip from her orange drink. "So, Severus, how did your speech go today? Sorry I had to miss it, but... you know." He felt the bodyguard's eyes in his back.

"Have a nice evening, Severus."

********

So the little upstarts thought they could out-spy him. And Lucius, too. Ha. He wondered how Potter had taken to the fact Hermione needed protection because of him, and decided to forget the Wonder Boy's invitation, unless he'd had a chance to talk to her again

In the meantime, he'd see whether the Auror was worth his salt. 

He was after them as Hermione led the bodyguard into a punishing run during a whole hour before dinner, circling the resort twice and finishing by a grueling path in the deep sand before taking the steps up, two by two. When she stopped, near the hotel entrance, they both were winded and red. 

He contemplated them unobtrusively from behind the pillar in the huge hotel dining room. They spoke amicably, joined by Draco for a moment, and by what looked like American colleagues of the woman. Marisa Beneix came in, too, and artfully pumped Hermione as to her acquaintance with Severus. 

"Oh, of course," Hermione simpered. "It was a complete education as Snape's apprentice. Not only in Potions, if you get my drift." Marcus buried himself in his steak, absolutely professional as Hermione batted her eyelashes at the Spanish doctor with a knowing wink. She shrugged, world weary. "Naturally things change, but he's such a darling of a man under his wry exterior. And such a mind! I Frankly, you are absolutely his type, if I remember well. Worth cultivating, in any case. Me? Oh dear, no. The whole teacher-student thing, you know. It gets old quite fast. I'm quite sure he's hovering somewhere near here, not actively looking for female company, because he's got a lot of that, but he would not be averse to a smart, beautiful woman seeking him out. As far as I know." Hermione theatrically spanned the dining room with her hand shielding her eyes in theater sea-captain fashion, eerily hovering over the corner he was standing behind, quite near her, Disillusioned.

Without magical powers, she couldn't see him. All the same the girl, he reluctantly admitted, had grown wily enough to make the game interesting. But his innards didn't feel they were playing. 

He was shading them as they strode to a noisy discotheque near the hotel, where a mingling party for Muggle and wizarding participants was held. "Really, Marcus, you don't want to bring your fianc?e over? The Portkey fee's on me. No, really, I understand you're spoiling your vacation for me. And this Glamour you put on me? Really, really fantastic. I may not make many contacts who'll remember me tomorrow, but I really need this R&R, the dancing and stuff to clean my head, and I don't want to be recognized." She cleared her throat. "Marcus, it's not really the me Harry's used to, so." She never stopped prattling for a moment. How could the poor Auror concentrate on his bodyguarding mission? Severus sniggered to himself. He'd be too smothered by her sound waves to be able to pay attention to his surroundings.

He'd be too taken by the way she danced, too. Emboldened by the Glamour, she was moving on the smallish, crowded dance floor with an abandon and an kind of animal grace Severus had never fathomed his bookish apprentice to have in herself, much less exhibit so shamelessly—even if she was quite unrecognizable under the Glamor—under multicolored flashing lights, where so many males reacted to it. Even Draco, master of ceremonies and flowing effortlessly from dancer to genial host to ruthless organizer, forgot himself enough to dance in front of her for at least five minutes. From his seat at the bar, Snape kept a jaundiced eye on her and on the variety of men she danced with, commending more than her part of general attention. A Glamour had taken care of his appearance, too, and he could ogle her all over to his heart's content, as indeed several others around him were apparently happy to. It was almost a consolation, that Potter's lackey would be sleeping in her room tonight. At some point she pulled Marcus by the hand, went to the bar and planted her elbows on it, barely a hand's width from Severus' own. She graced him with the careless, sweaty closed smile given to chance neighbors at a dance bar and hard, searching eyes, and focused her attention on Marcus again. "Having fun?"

"It's a professional nightmare, what you're inflicting on me. But yes, Hermione. It's fun."

She shrugged. "The Unbreakable holds until tomorrow night. You're not actually working till then."

"Mr. Potter instructed me otherwise." 

"So he would. Still."

"I can feel many glares on you. Not all benevolent."

So maybe the boy was worth some of his salt.

She popped open the closed bottle she'd ordered and sipped pensively. "Actually, so can I." Her eyes roved over the room again, staid on Severus for two full seconds, and on two or three other men, too. At the end she shrugged. "My dancing must have gained me some fans. Let's go back?"

The boy was quite a good dancer, too. But his eyes and demeanor made it clear to an educated observer: he wasn't quiet. Neither was Severus, whose sharpened senses hummed as in the presence of danger. He silently cursed Draco's giving in to the disco owner, who hadn't wanted any security arrangements to "mar the good cheer of happy disco goers. We're not in Paris or Bruxelles, after all, there aren't any terror attacks here." 

It served them right, as a volley of hexes and automatic weapon shots peppered the dance floor and the scene, coming from the club's two entrances. People were falling and screaming, some wizards trying to deflect the curses or protect their Muggle or wounded neighbors. In less than a heartbeat Severus had gone down on his belly, and come up again in a perfect fighting stance, firing Protection Charms around himself and the people in the immediate circle around him as he threw hexes at the forms spreading in from the entrance, a gaggle of black-clad men wielding both Kalashnikov guns and deathly wands.

From the corner of his eye Severus looked for Hermione, but didn't find her. At the approximate place he'd seen her last Marcus was holding somebody down, a Protego bubble originating from his wand shimmering around most of the dance floor. In another corner Draco crouched against the aluminium-decorated bar, flinging hexes to his heart's content. Near him, Marisa was doing almost as much damage, while tall, lanky Rupert Balfour from Amsterdam, for all he'd chosen to study theoretical mathematics, had already felled four of the attackers from his vantage point near the entrance. Creevey and Snape locked eyes for a second. Creevey crouched lower for one second to talk to Hermione, who shook her head in negation. He faltered a moment, then crawled to Severus.

"How many?'

"Eighteen of them that I counted, five of us that we can rely on. We've got a private militia for the Conference but the disco didn't want them inside their perimeter. They're coming in as we talk, I guess Draco called them already. Until then the other wizards here will do what they can, since there's a danger of friendly fire. We've got to get the Muggles out of here."

Creevey shrugged. "With the numbers of Muggles being killed by terrorists all over Europe, we don't need to worry about those too much." He was speaking and hexing in a quite impressive manner. Almost as good as myself, thought Snape, silently appreciating the boy as he mutely fell one of the attackers. No stupid sentimentality, either. 

"The Muggles here are the ones vetted by the Ministry to participate in common projects with the Wizarding universities. They're of vital importance to us." He dived into a somersault to one side, throwing as he rolled a Sectumsempra to the black-veiled man who'd try to get him and Creevey. He hexed two others for good measure. More attackers were pouring in from the kitchen entrance, screaming and chanting. Their garb was eerily similar to his own Death Eater costume, but with headgear-veils, and Aladdin-style sabers tucked into their wide flowing fabric belts. 

Fall. Crouch. Hex. Dive.

A volley of curses came their way from three black-veiled men standing behind the bar.

Creevey rolled away, aimed, hexed. The Protego vanished. Two of the three terrorists the blond had aimed at fell. One of them activated the explosive belt he was wearing and exploded himself together with his immediate entourage, including his still-standing companion.

A black cloud appeared under the ceiling, in which white smoke letters in a kind of Arabesque font proclaimed in English "NO to prostitution to Mudblood's pigs! YES to Viziers' supremacy!" As most of their comrades dispersed to hide in protected fighting positions, three of the attackers were cutting a swath through the un-Protected crowd, wielding wide-bladed sabers and wands. 

Some small cloudy black flags, on which the intricate-patterned alphabet letters arranged in a kind of white circle shimmered, were floating around the hall. Draco aimed at one, muttered something, and the flag exploded. Again. Again. Again. The downfall from the little flags released showers of obnoxious drops. The people around began coughing and gagging. A middle-aged witch was trying to pull two Muggle men into her Bubblehead, and tearing it open again and again. 

Creevey Stunned Draco.

Hermione, crouching over a half-decapitated man, tried to stopper the bursts of blood as she shouted into a cell phone.

From all directions came screams, shots, and angry pops of failed Apparition attempts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for such a long absence... I've been missing the fic world everyday, and just not getting to it. New hyperactive bosses will do that to you. Hope to make up for the long absence, soon, because it's all written and should post fast.
> 
> And, hmmm, the reviews are what I missed most. Actually.


	4. Aftermath

Hermione, crouching over a half-decapitated man, tried to stopper the bursts of blood as she shouted into a cell phone.

From all directions came screams, shots, and angry pops of failed Apparition attempts.

"Cover me," Snape yelled at Creevey to cover the din of the battle. "I'm going to dismantle the Apparition block."

"I've got you, Sir!" Anthony Goldstein's French cousin Ethan, all grown-up and a little paunchier than Snape remembered him from the exchange program with his alma mater the Paris Higher Wizarding Institute a decade before. He'd been a reedy, lively Potions-cum-Chemistry scholar.

One of the terrorists swiveled towards them as the Apparition blocks began to shimmer and fade. 

Ethan fell wounded, heroically maintaining his guard over Snape instead of keeping his energy to heal his wounds. The Apparition block fell.

"Side-along everybody faraway from here! Quick! As far as possible! Don't go back to the hotel!"

Wizards grabbed Muggles and Apparated away. Sirens and wails were heard outside. The Conference special security detail, or CSSD, a task force Draco had asked Snape to supervise after Kingsley's advice, formed from Muggle SAS and Aurory veterans, broke in.

"Prevente, Prevente!" shouted all the Aurors.

The specially devised version of Finite Incantatem from the new incomers annulled all magical powers for a few minutes, on the assumption that Wizarding terrorists would rely on magic and the Prevente would enable the Conference Security Detail to overpower them. After a floating second or two, the terrorists began wielding their swords and garrots.

Heavy men in protective uniforms streamed into the disco, met by Muggle semiautomatic weapons sprung to life again. The attackers had come ready.

In the middle of the dance floor, Hermione was kicking and somersaulting in a kind of weird, lethal Asiatic dance, reminding of the Shaolin fluid fighting combat choreography. Each contact of her body with a human form left it wriggling on the floor. As Hermione landed one more blow a semi-automatic burst cut both her and her opponent down. Blood sprang high.

The Hell in the disco raged even harsher as Snape threw a divertive sequence of attack spells over and beyond her. He used the furious ensuing mayhem to grab Goldstein and Hermione and Apparate them away to the lodge in the mountains. He hastily Healed their wounds, then got back to the scene using his CSSD identification. 

The whole building was surrounded by police, the local SWAT teams, and journalists. Inside the battle raged on, the fighters slipping over the bodies and blood of Muggles and Wizards alike. The CSSD head rapidly coordinated with Creevey and Snape, and with the Muggle SWATs.

It took almost another half hour to neutralize the terrorists and bring all in need to appropriate medical care. Another one to verify the hotel's unbreachable security had indeed held.

All valid participants were Patronused and called back to the hotel lobby. Concerted measures were feverously hatched as television screens the world over flashed the pictures of remnants of black flags with white calligraphic slogans stained by red blood, of the greyish smoke still clouding the place, of ambulances and stretchers.

No less than five terrorist organizations had already claimed the attack. Only one of them, though, spoke of "supernatural natural supremacy," which was laughed about on hundreds of TV channels. An allusion to "all men who wear robes naturally allied against all dogs who wear trousers" was only half understood by the majority. 

In the executive command centers all over the world though, the unhappy few Muggles admitted to full disclosure under the Statute of Secrecy paled, sicced their best analysts on that one, and summoned their Wizarding counterparts. 

"What's there to understand?" shrugged Kingsley to the tense Downing Street tenant. "When it was Torquemada, Zabini's ancestor sided with the Inquisition. When it was Mao or Pol Pot, a faction of the Asian wizardry gave them support. Hitler was Grindelwald's best buddy. Now there's Daesh. They'll find a Wizarding force to help them, too. You've got your crazies, we've got ours."

 

********

In a secluded basement of the hotel, the debriefing was harsh and bitter. 

"What was this guy from VIP protection doing in there, when we were forbidden to even approach the disco," the CSSD commander bellowed as he jutted his chin towards Creevey. "I don't appreciate being double-sided. And you Stunned one of our two only inside contacts, too!"

"I was accompanying a friend on my private holiday time." Creevey was not in the least fazed by the havoc. "Now if you agreed to that stupid diktat of not having security inside. I'd say that's not my problem. Although it did become a problem when some people got killed because you didn't want to darken that wonderful holiday spirit. If I see Lucius Malfoy's son, " he directed a pregnant stare on the dark, silent form of Snape in the corner of the room, "exploding toxic clouds over the heads of the public, I am going to serve and protect, or I'm going to hand in my wand." 

They were still bickering long after Severus slipped away.

 

********

"It's the second time today I bring you back to your room in quite a piteous shape, after you've engaged in theatrical heroics that you were miserably unable to pull off, and which could have cost you your life," Snape hissed as he went over the crude first-aid Healing he'd performed on Hermione, properly cleaning and closing her wounds in the quiet of her room. He'd found her catatonic in the lodge after he left the debriefing—Creevey was still there, and very anxious for his charge—fussed over by Goldstein. He hadn't bothered with more than very basic pain relief, and she held and bit into a pillow, tears of pain freely streaming as the corners of her mouth stretched towards her jaw. Good, he thought viciously. Maybe next time she'll keep her head down.

"The man with the neck wound. Did he make it?" She could barely talk.

He grudgingly nodded. "Apparently he will. The ambulance team was pleased with your work." 

After a few seconds he added, "Where did you learn to fight that way?"

"Shaolin and Tai-chi. They both work on the inner energy flows, and are not bad as fighting methods go. Some powerful wizards use the techniques to strengthen their magic. I went to learn in Tibet and Japan. It helped... at least for the fighting." The bitterness in her voice almost matched his.

"Nothing wrong with your magical energy that I can see here." Her body was responding beautifully to his Healing magic with one of its own. Once again he found himself basking in the magical whirlwind his forces and hers created when they met, soothing aches and just generally wonderful. She was feeling it also apparently. Her face softened and she let herself fall back on the pillows.

As he completed the Healing, his hands fluttered lightly above her body, hovering over the line between care and caress. "And it was impressive fighting," he avowed.

"Thanks. And thanks for being there and saving me. Again." At every place their bodies were touching, magic tingled. And in some of them, the tingle was not just magic.

He sneered. "You know what they say in Auror training. 'Thanks, what?'"

It was a saying that had run around after they'd begun accepting female trainees. The whole sentence was, "'Thanks, what? Take off your clothes, cadet."

The atmosphere changed. 

In frozen silence he grabbed a chair and sat near the small table near the window, conjured a roll of parchment, called room service for a pot of coffee and sandwiches, and settled down for an evening of quiet reading, as he'd done so many times during the apprenticeship.

"What are you doing?" 

"Reading until your bodyguard comes back. Or do you want to chance staying alone in here?" Her appalled eyes answered for her. 

He drove the point home, squaring himself again in the armchair. "I'm famished and tired. Not to mention stinking. But I'm stuck guarding you now, so at least I'll eat. Now I suggest you get some rest. Tomorrow's schedule will be modified, but you will have to give your seminar, at some point."

Her face closed. "It's not right," she mumbled under her breath.

"Oh. Do feel free to call your friend Potter"—he pronounced the name with the same explosive disgust he'd used during their fourth year"—for another of his minions, then. I'll be reading in wait."

"No, I meant that you and me, in this room."

He stood and went to loom over her in one fluid, menacing, angry motion. "I will not force myself on you, Granger. I've withstood, believe it or not, much more—ah, enticing visions of witches in bed without losing my self-control. Had I decided to force myself on you, I had no need to wait until now, right? Actually," he sneered at her, "maybe there was a need, in case I wanted to force myself on you. Because until now I would not have gotten to do any forcing, isn't that right? Quite the contrary, I've spent years, literally evading your sultry mannerisms."

It was a double lie, he thought. She'd never provoked him in any way. And he didn't remember a more enticing vision, ever. 

It was a double untruth, she thought. She'd done all she could to master herself during the apprenticeship, and she'd never acted sultry. The proof was that, during the Debacle Dinner, neither had been secure enough to even broach the subject. And... he wouldn't have to force her now, either, if he would only ask. 

At the price of great effort, she stood, too, literally pushing him away from his position near the bed. She summarily brushed from her dress the most disgusting remnants of the night (oh, to have for a second the force to Scourgify) and turned towards him. "I'll go down to the lobby. It's teeming with Aurors and security types, and wait for Marcus there. You don't need to trouble yourself, Professor Snape. Thank you very much. I'll have the room service redirected to your room. Again."

He wordlessly, ceremoniously ushered her out of her door and went to shower in his own room. 

He was toweling himself on the thick hotel carpet when she knocked at his door. He threw on pants and a t-shirt and opened. She'd changed into a soft yellow sundress and ballerina shoes which she kicked off immediately. Under the faint sunburn on her cheeks and nose she was pale as death. She went directly to the bed, turned down the covers, and sat on the lower sheet. Her gaze was fixed on her fingers as they played with the embroidery on the hem of the dress.

"Granger?"

"I'm sorry for my outburst," she mumbled. Her eyes never went up. "I changed my mind. Let's win your bet for you."


End file.
